This book provides a collective view of the five major English chartered trading companies which were active during the period 1688-1763: The East India Company, the Royal African Company, the Hudson's Bay Company, The Levant Company, and the Russia Company. Using both archival and secondary sources, this monograph fills in some of the knowledge gaps concerning the less well-studied companies, and examines the interconnections between international rivalry, the financial operations of the companies, and politics which have not featured prominently in the historiography.

Written for students and based on over 15 years' worth of teaching, this book provides students with both a very accessible introduction to crime and punishment in early modern England and the necessary tools to encourage discussion and debate about some of the key sources from the period. An updated bibliography to include historiography from the last six years provides students with an entry point into further reading and knowledge for essays and seminars on popular courses on crime and justice in Tudor and Stuart England. The introduction has been revised and questions have been added to encourage more discussion about the sources and help students question the sources' historical context and decisions made by authors; this is perfect for students with little experience of primary sources from this period.

Paula Bartley's Queen Victoria examines Victorian Britain from the perspective of the Queen. Victoria's personal and political actions are discussed in relation to contemporary shifts in Britain's society, politics and culture, examining to what extent they did - or did not - influence events throughout her reign. Drawing from contemporary sources, including Queen Victoria's own diaries, as well as the most recent scholarship, the book contextualises Victoria historically by placing her in the centre of an unparalleled period of innovation and reform, in which the social and political landscape of Britain, and its growing empire, was transformed. Balancing Victoria's private and public roles, it will examine the cultural paradox of the Queen's rule in relation to the changing role of women: she was a devoted wife, prolific mother and obsessive widow, who was also Queen of a large Empire and Empress of India. Marrying cultural history, gender history and other histories 'from below' with high politics, war and diplomacy, this is a concise and accessible introduction to Queen Victoria's life for students of Victorian Britain and the British Empire.

*A Guardian Book of the Day* The defeat of socialist firebrand Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Leader in 2019 confirmed Tony Benn's famous retort 'the Labour party has never been a socialist party, although there have always been socialists in it.' For over a hundred years, the British Labour Party has been a bastion for working class organisation and struggle. However, has it ever truly been on the side of the workers? Where do its interests really lie? And can we rely on it to provide a barrier against right-wing forces? Simon Hannah's smart and succinct history of the Labour left guides us through the twists and turns of the party, from the Bevanite movement and the celebrated government of Clement Attlee, through the emergence of a New Left in the 1970s and the Blairism of the 1990s, to Corbyn's defeat and his replacement by Keir Starmer. This new edition is updated throughout, with a new final chapter and conclusion bringing the story up to date.

This book looks at how the workplace was transformed through a greater awareness of the roles that germs played in English working lives from c.1880 to 1945. Cutting across a diverse array of occupational settings - such as the domestic kitchen, the milking shed, the factory, and the Post Office - it offers new perspectives on the history of the germ sciences. It brings to light the ways in which germ scientists sought to transform English working lives through new types of technical and educational interventions that sought to both eradicate and instrumentalise germs. It then asks how we can measure and judge the success of such interventions by tracing how workers responded to the potential applications of the germ sciences through their participation in friendly societies, trade unions, colleges, and volunteer organisations. Throughout the book, close attention is paid to reconstructing vernacular traditions of working with invisible life in order to better understand both the successes and failures of the germ sciences to transform the working practices and material conditions of different workplaces. The result is a more diverse history of the peoples, politics, and practices that went into shaping the germ sciences in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England.

Originally published in 1984, this was the first detailed study of the impact of Puritan influences on the wealthy county families of early Stuart England. It discusses one of the central issues in the history of the English Civil War: what motivated those men and women who risked all in opposition to King Charles I. The book looks at the role played by gentry families in the advancement or defence of 'true religion', and considers the reasons why powerful families which helped to govern the counties were to be found among the godly. It explores the conflict between class values and the exacting demands of an austere religious philosophy and examines the relationship between the Puritan gentry and the clerical Puritans who included authors, university dons, schoolmasters, lecturers and parish clergy.

Originally published in 1972 and based on extensive research and use of source materials including manuscripts, this book examines Puritan spiritual autobiographies written before 1725 and sets them in the context of the literary tradition out of which they grew. As well as Bunyan, Baxter and Fox, this book also discusses important works which have received less attention, notably the Confessions of Richard Norwood, the Bermudan settler. The book identifies 3 strands in the tradition: the work of the 'orthodox' Puritans; the prophets of the Commonwealth, and the confessions and journals of the early Quakers. The social, religious and literary factors which contributed to their development are discussed and it is shown how the self-analysis popularized by the Puritan preachers and writers contributed to the development of the novel. The book will be of particular value to those interested in 17th Century literature or religion.

The historical and cultural aspects of the Cold War have been much studied, yet its physical manifestations in England - its buildings and structures - have remained largely unknown. To the great landscape historian WG Hoskins writing in the 1950's they were profoundly alien: "England of the ... electric fence, of the high barbed wire around some unmentionable devilment.... Barbaric England of the scientists, the military men, and the politicians". Now these survivors of the Cold War are, in their turn, disappearing fast, like medieval monasteries and bastioned forts before them - only with more limited scope for regeneration and reuse. This book is the first to look at these monuments to the Cold War. It is heavily illustrated with photographs of the sites as they survive today, archive photographs (many previously unpublished), modern and historic air photographs, site and building plans, and specially commissioned interpretative drawings. It also endeavours look at the installations within the military and political context of what was one of the defining phenomena of the late 20th century.

This book explores the hopes, desires, and imagined futures that characterized British radicalism in the 1790s, and the resurfacing of this sense of possibility in the following decades. The articulation of "Jacobin" sentiments reflected the emotional investments of men and women inspired by the French Revolution and committed to political transformation. The authors emphasize the performative aspects of political culture, and the spaces in which mobilization and expression occurred - including the club room, tavern, coffeehouse, street, outdoor meeting, theater, chapel, courtroom, prison, and convict ship. America, imagined as a site of republican citizenship, and New South Wales, experienced as a space of political exile, widened the scope of radical dreaming. Part 1 focuses on the political culture forged under the shifting influence of the French Revolution. Part 2 explores the afterlives of British Jacobinism in the year 1817, in early Chartist memorialization of the Scottish "martyrs" of 1794, and in the writings of E. P. Thompson. The relationship between popular radicals and the Romantics is a theme pursued in several chapters; a dialogue is sustained across the disciplinary boundaries of British history and literary studies. The volume captures the revolutionary decade's effervescent yearning, and its unruly persistence in later years.

The relations of Great Britain and its Dominions significantly influenced the development of the British Empire in the late 19th and the first third of the 20th century. The mutual attitude to the constitutional issues that Dominion and British leaders have continually discussed at Colonial and Imperial Conferences respectively was one of the main aspects forming the links between the mother country and the autonomous overseas territories. This volume therefore focuses on the key period when the importance of the Dominions not only increased within the Empire itself, but also in the sphere of the international relations, and the Dominions gained the opportunity to influence the forming of the Imperial foreign policy. During the first third of the 20th century, the British Empire gradually transformed into the British Commonwealth of Nations, in which the importance of Dominions excelled. The work is based on the study of unreleased sources from British archives, a large number of published documents and extensive relevant literature.

This book is a detailed examination of the sources and protocols John Foxe used to justify the Reformation, and claim that the Church of Rome had fallen into the grip of Antichrist. The focus is on the pre-Lollard, medieval history in the first two editions of the Acts and Monuments. Comparison of the narrative that Foxe writes to the possible sources helps us to better understand what it was that Foxe was trying to do, and how he came to achieve his aims. A focus on sources also highlights the collaborative circle in which Foxe worked, recognizing the essential role of other scholars and clerics such as John Bale and Matthew Parker.

This volume offers challenging and imaginative new perspectives on the fiscal-military structures that underpinned the development of modern European states from the eighteenth century onwards.

Thatcher provides an accessible and scholarly introduction to the personality and career of Britain's first female political leader and the twentieth century's longest serving Prime Minister. Providing a balanced narrative and assessment of one of the most significant figures of the post-war era, this new biography examines the reasons why Margaret Thatcher has been admired by many as an architect of national revival, yet loathed by others as the author of widening social and geographical division. The book begins by examining the making of Margaret Thatcher, her education, the beginning of her political career and her rise through the Conservative Party to her appointment as unexpected leader. Moving on to her tenure as Prime Minister, Graham Goodlad then examines her impact at home and abroad, covering her controversial economic policies and hard line with the trade unions, leadership through the Falklands conflict and during the last decade of the Cold War, and influence on Britain's relationship with a more closely integrated Europe. Finally, the biography closes with a review of Thatcher's legacy before and after her death in April 2013, and considers how far she shaped the politics and society of the 1980s and those of our own time. Thatcher is essential reading for all students of twentieth-century history and politics.

How did England, once a minor regional power, become a global hegemon between 1689 and 1815? Why, over the same period, did she become the world's first industrial nation? Gary W. Cox addresses these questions in Marketing Sovereign Promises. The book examines two central issues: the origins of the great taxing power of the modern state and how that power is made compatible with economic growth. Part I considers England's rise after the revolution of 1689, highlighting the establishment of annual budgets with shutdown reversions. This core reform effected a great increase in per capita tax extraction. Part II investigates the regional and global spread of British budgeting ideas. Cox argues that states grew only if they addressed a central credibility problem afflicting the Ancien Regime - that rulers were legally entitled to spend public revenue however they deemed fit.

From the early fourteenth century to the end of the sixteenth, the Anglo-Scottish borderlands witnessed one of the most intense periods of warfare and disorder ever seen in modern Europe. As a consequence of near-constant conflict between England and Scotland, Borderers suffered at the hands of marauding armies, who ravaged the land, destroying crops, slaughtering cattle, burning settlements and killing indiscriminately. Forced by extreme circumstances, many Borderers took to reiving to ensure the survival of their families and communities, and for the best part of 300 years, countless raiding parties made their way over the border. The story of the Reivers is one of survival, stealth, treachery, ingenuity and deceit, expertly brought to life in Alistair Moffat's acclaimed book.

This volume discusses the development of governmental proto-bureaucracy, which led to and was influenced by the inclusion of professional agents and spies in the early modern English government. In the government's attempts to control religious practices, wage war, and expand their mercantile reach both east and west, spies and agents became essential figures of empire, but their presence also fundamentally altered the old hierarchies of class and power. The job of the spy or agent required fluidity of role, the adoption of disguise and alias, and education, all elements that contributed to the ideological breakdown of social and class barriers. The volume argues that the inclusion of the lower classes (commoners, merchants, messengers, and couriers) in the machinery of government ultimately contributed to the creation of governmental proto-bureaucracy. The importance and significance of these spies is demonstrated through the use of statistical social network analysis, analyzing social network maps and statistics to discuss the prominence of particular figures within the network and the overall shape and dynamics of the evolving Elizabethan secret service. The Eye of the Crown is a useful resource for students and scholars interested in government, espionage, social hierarchy, and imperial power in Elizabethan England.

By combining politics, culture, theology and psychology in this way - and by complementing the resulting narrative with key primary sources from the period - this book arms readers to study, explore and understand the British Reformations in new and important ways. Covering England, Scotland and Wales but placing Britain into the wider context of Europe, this book provides students which a comprehensive study of how the British Isles and its people were affected by the Reformation. Reformation was a process, not an event and this book charts both the Protestant and Catholic Reformations which took place under Henry VIII, Mary I and Elizabeth I to show students new to the period how these events shaped the course of the sixteenth century.

How did England, once a minor regional power, become a global hegemon between 1689 and 1815? Why, over the same period, did she become the world's first industrial nation? Gary W. Cox addresses these questions in Marketing Sovereign Promises. The book examines two central issues: the origins of the great taxing power of the modern state and how that power is made compatible with economic growth. Part I considers England's rise after the revolution of 1689, highlighting the establishment of annual budgets with shutdown reversions. This core reform effected a great increase in per capita tax extraction. Part II investigates the regional and global spread of British budgeting ideas. Cox argues that states grew only if they addressed a central credibility problem afflicting the Ancien Regime - that rulers were legally entitled to spend public revenue however they deemed fit.

English Society, 1580-1680 paints a fascinating picture of society and rural change in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Keith Wrightson discusses both the enduring characteristics of society as well as the course of social change, and emphasizes the wide variation in experience between different social groups and local communities. This is an excellent interpretation of English society, its continuity and its change.

Anglo-Chinese Encounters Before the Opium War: A Tale of Two Empires Over Two Centuries studies the fascinating encounters between the two historic empires from Queen Elizabeth I's first letter to the Ming Emperor Wanli in 1583, to Lord Palmerston's letter to the Minister of China in 1840. Starting with Queen Elizabeth I's letter to the Chinese Emperor and ending with the letter from Lord Palmerston to the Minister of China just before the Opium War, this book explores the long journey in between from cultural diplomacy to gunboat diplomacy. It interweaves the most known diplomatic efforts at the official level with the much unknown intellectual interactions at the people-to-people level, from missionaries to scholars, from merchants to travelers and from artists to scientists. This book adopts a novel "mirror" approach by pairing and comparing people, texts, commodities, artworks, architecture, ideologies, operating systems and world views of the two empires. Using letters, gifts and traded goods as fulcrums, and by adopting these unique lenses, it puts China into the world history narratives to contextualise Anglo-Chinese relations, thus providing a fresh analysis of the surviving evidence. Xin Liu casts a new light on understanding the Sino-centric and Anglo-centric world views in driving the complex relations between the two empires, and the reversals of power shifts that are still unfolding today. The book is not intended for specialists in history, but a general audience wishing to learn more about China's historical engagement with the world.

This text chronicles all the surviving milestones and guidestones in Cornwall and places them within the context of the development of the road system.

From Rhondda heroes chasing the American dream to rioters staking a claim in their society In the Frame is a powerful alternative history of twentieth-century South Wales, offered from the personal viewpoint of cultural historian Dai Smith. It takes the reader into a territory - a mythical and veritable Dai Country - formed by the influence of writers and painters, boxers and historians, friends and relatives, rioters and correspondents, critics and photographers. As well as the autobiographical overtones of a Tondypandy childhood and distinguished career, In the Frame contains the far wider undertones of a collective biography. Its mosaic pieces together the consciousness of a society which led its inhabitants in search of fame and fortune as well as the daily struggle for rights and recognition without sympathy or sentimentality. An alternative history of twentieth century Wales by TV presenter and the nation's leading cultural historian Dai Smith.

Born in battle, Peter White's journal is one of the most extraordinary stories to come out of the Second World War. As a 24-year-old lieutenant in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, Peter kept an unauthorised journal of his regiment's advance through the Low Countries and into Germany in the closing months of the war in Europe.

Forbidden by his commanding officer from doing so for security reasons, Peter's boyhood habit of diary-keeping had become an obsession too strong to shake off. Each day he found time to record in copious detail the war going on around him, the lives and deaths of the men with whom he served, and the inexorable Allied advance into the Third Reich.

In one of the most graphic and finely crafted evocations of a soldier at war, the images he records are not for the faint-hearted. There are heroes aplenty within its pages, but there are also disturbing insights into the darker side of humanity, frequently brushed aside in many other war accounts - the men who broke under the strain and who ran away (sometimes with tragic results); the binge drinking that occasionally rendered the whole platoon unable to fight; the looting and the callous disregard for human life that happens when death is a daily companion.

Hidden away for more than fifty years, White's diary is a remarkable account of the horrors of war experienced by a British soldier in the greatest conflict of the twentieth century.

Scottish engineer Daniel Wilson (1790-1849) helped launch the industrial revolution in France and acquired a major art collection. His daughter, Marguerite (1836-1902), restored the chateau de Chenonceau, near the Loire Valley. His son, Daniel (1840-1919), close to Marguerite, became an MP, founded a newspaper chain, rose to become a leading republican politician, and married the daughter of President of the Republic Jules Grevy. The younger Daniel Wilson's business activities and news strategies offended many and prompted his involvement in a scandal (the sale of the Legion of Honour decoration) that led to his downfall and that of President Grevy. Wilson's name became and remains synonymous with political corruption. This book is the first to examine the nexus of political and press connections in early republican France from his viewpoint. The struggle for press freedom since the 1789 Revolution culminating in the 1881 Press Law is assessed by considering the stance of Wilson, Grevy, and the leading press magnate Emile de Girardin and other press tycoons. The flamboyant Marguerite, who hosted Gustave Flaubert in Chenonceau and journeyed to India, colours the saga.

Why did working-class women become the central labour force on assembly lines in the new consumer goods' industries of the inter-war period? What was the long-term significance of this for the pattern of women's work, both in paid employment and in the home? Originally published in 1990, Women Assemble fills a major gap in the history of women and work, and develops a theory of women's class relations, and of course gender and class more generally, by means of an original case-study. Taken from a wide variety of sources, it uses a multidisciplinary approach and is brought to life by interviews with people who worked in assembly-line industries during the inter-war period. This extremely readable study is important to feminists, historians, and sociologists, as well as to all those concerned with issues of gender, class, and the labour process.